The Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, has it out with Vox. He has demonstrated this throughout the legislature in the Official Butlletí of the Parliament of Catalonia (BOPC) in his written responses to questions from the party led in the Catalan Chamber by Ignacio Garriga, mostly because he considers that he maintains a hyperactivity that is not very thorough when it comes to to ask questions. However, this time Balcells has charged against the far-right formation for translating proper names in Catalan into Spanish.

“I suggest that, when you ask for information about specific people, you validate your sources since I sense that, among other cases, when you have asked about:

– “M. Asunción González-Maestro” they wanted to do it for Maria Assumpció González-Mestre.

– “Marco Inzitari” they wanted to do by Marco Inzitari.

– «Alba Olmos» they wanted to do it for Alba Oms.”

This is how the minister responds to Vox’s question about the salaries awarded to each of the 21 members of the Consell Assessor de l’Atenció Integrada Social i Sanitària. Balcells, in addition to clarifying that “they do not receive any additional remuneration”, amends the translation of two proper names in Catalan into Spanish, and the Spanishization, in the second of the three examples, of a surname of Italian origin.

In the response, dated January 26, 2024, Balcells adds fuel to the fire and suggests that Vox has proceeded in this way as under Franco: “In case their sources are correct and they have carried out a translation exercise of the names of these people, I note that for a few years now no one has had any right to change a person’s name without their consent. I don’t know if they do it out of nostalgia to reclaim, in some way, the years when this was the practice usual of the administration. In any case, and for the benefit of the doubt, I prefer to think that it has been an error on the part of the source of information.

It is not the first time that the Health Minister faces Vox black on white. In November of last year, the Republican criticized the far-right for asking a written question about the “number of suicides among minors attending school in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years” that he had already answered in October. “I would like that, from now on, the parliamentary group [of Vox] makes responsible use and appropriate treatment of the information provided to them, since this also entails an expenditure of public resources that, otherwise, would mean wasting them.” , Balcells then replied.